Minnan, also called Southern Min or Hokkien, is a branch of the Min group of Sinitic languages. It originated in southern Fujian province around the cities of Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, and travelled with emigrants to Taiwan, where a local form is the majority home language, and throughout Southeast Asia, where Hokkien-speaking communities are long established in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Tens of millions of people speak Minnan varieties in total. Related varieties within the wider Southern Min branch include Teochew and Hainanese. Minnan is tonal, with an elaborate system of tone changes when words combine, and it is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or Cantonese. It is written with Chinese characters, though a Latin-based romanisation known as Peh-oe-ji has been used since the nineteenth century, particularly in Taiwan.
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